1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to recording apparatuses, having multiple transporting means for transporting sheets downstream from the recording means, such as facsimile apparatuses, photocopiers, printers, and so forth.
2. Description of the Related Art
A common transporting device for transporting sheets such as recording paper and the like with a recording apparatus such as an ink-jet printer or the like, will be described in brief with reference to FIG. 13.
As shown in FIG. 13, sheets are nipped between and transported by a main transporting roller 113 and a pinch roller 118, and recording is performed by a recording head 111 disposed downstream therefrom. Then, the sheet which has been recorded upon is discharged by a first discharging roller 116 and a first spur 119, and a second discharging roller 117 and a second spur 120 disposed downstream from the recording head 111. Here, the attitude of the sheet following the trailing edge of the sheet having passed through the nipping portion between the main transporting roller 113 and pinch roller 118 is stabilized by using two discharging rollers.
Conventionally, there has been difference in sheet transporting precision in the areas wherein the sheet is transported with the main transporting roller alone and wherein the sheet is transported with the discharging roller alone, but output images have mainly consisted of recording text alone or graphics, so this difference in transporting precision has not been a major problem.
However, in accordance with the improvement in image quality of recording apparatuses in recent years, there are more demands for recording photographic images over the entire recordable area of the sheet, and so improvement in the precision in transporting sheets of the discharging roller alone, to reduce difference with the sheet transporting precision of the main transporting roller, has been awaited.
An arrangement to this end might be conceived wherein the sheet transporting precision is improved with only the discharging roller, to around that of the main transporting roller, but with conventional arrangements such as described above which require multiple discharging rollers, this has resulted in great costs for improving the precision in transporting sheets for all of the discharging rollers.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to improve transporting precision with multiple discharging rollers without greatly increasing costs, and provide a recording apparatus with good transporting precision at the trailing end of the sheet.
To this end, a recording apparatus for recording on recording sheets by recording means comprises: a transporting roller for transporting recording sheets disposed upstream of the recording means relative to the transporting direction; a proximal discharging roller for transporting recording sheets and being disposed downstream of the recording means relative to the transporting direction; and a distal discharging roller disposed downstream of the proximal discharging roller relative to the transporting direction and being of higher precision than the proximal discharging roller.
Further objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following description of the preferred embodiments with reference to the attached drawings.